Identification of human motion signature using airborne radar data

Data containing the radar signature of amoving person on the groundwere collected at ranges of up to 30 kmfroma moving airborne platform using the DRDC Ottawa X-bandWideband Experimental Airborne Radar (XWEAR). The human target radar echo returns were found to possess a characteristic amplitude modulated (AM) and frequency modulated (FM) signature which could be usefully characterized in terms of conventional AM and FM modulation parameters. Human detection performance after space time adaptive processing is frequently limited by false alarms arising from incomplete cancellation of large radar cross-section discretes during the whitening step. However, the clutter discretes possess different modulation characteristics from the human targets discussed above. The ability of pattern classification techniques to use this parameter measurement space to distinguish between human targets and clutter discretes is explored and preliminary results presented.